Mr. Imperfect

by Karina Bliss

  She told him about the house she’d wanted to build there. “Wide decks overhung with grape leaves in summer. A big pond to encourage water fowl, a vegetable garden and chickens—”

  “Don’t forget the white picket fence.”

  “Too much work to paint,” she said wistfully, then registered the irony. “Sounds like your worst nightmare?”

  “Actually, it makes an attractive picture. One I’d like to hang in my inner-city penthouse.” His tone softened. “Choose your dream, Kez. I’m sorry, but right now you can only afford one.”

  For a split second she was eighteen again and panicky until she remembered that her hardest choice had been made then. And she’d survived. She gestured toward Christian’s phone. “May I?”

  He made no move to hand it over. “You still let duty drive you.” There was a critical note in his voice that stung.

  “Better than still evading responsibility.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Under duress, you bastard! The words trembled on the tip of Kezia’s tongue. “Yes,” she said at last. “You’re here now.” Coward, she said to herself, wanting to say it to him. “My point is,” she continued, “I have to consider other people’s interests as well as my own.”

  “But none of them are taking your risk.” Christian’s tone was equally rational. “And you could be throwing good money after bad. If your heart’s not in it, let the bank have it.”

  “If the hotel closes, it may never reopen. I can’t—won’t—let that happen to Waterview.”

  Without another word he handed her the phone and she punched in the number of the estate agent. “George? Kezia. You can tell Bob the land’s his if he’ll agree to an immediate settlement—”.

  Christian repossessed the phone. “And is prepared to pay a fair price. You’re supposed to be representing the interests of the vendor, George, so why the hell are you letting Bob Harvey dance on an old lady’s grave? Yes, I’m back…well I look forward to seeing you again, too. In fact you don’t have long to wait because in thirty minutes Kezia and I will be in your office. Make sure Bob’s there.” He rang off and saw the irritation on Kezia’s face. “I know, I know. You’re perfectly capable of handling this. But you’re grieving and you shouldn’t have to deal with ass-holes like Bob Harvey.”

  Once again, he’d disarmed her.

  “ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY thousand dollars and not a cent more, damn you—not you, Kezia. You, you robber’s dog!” Bob Harvey ripped off his tie, worn in deference to the occasion, hitched up his trousers, pushed south by his belly, and glared at Christian, who inclined his head graciously at the compliment.

  Dissatisfied with this response, the grizzled farmer turned on the estate agent. “Oh, yes, you can smirk with the commission you’re getting. Well, use it to buy a vote when you stand for racecourse chairman next week because you won’t be getting mine!”

  Having wiped the grin off somebody’s face, Bob signed the contract, then patted Kezia’s knee. “Don’t worry, love, I won’t let this affect our relationship.”

  Judging by the broken veins fanning out from the old farmer’s bulbous red nose, Christian suspected that relationship to be one of publican and best customer.

  Kezia’s words confirmed it. “Next one’s on the house, Bob.”

  “One!” Bob heaved to his feet. “The pub will be buying beer until I’m bloody carried out, after today’s chicanery.” His disgusted gaze swept over Christian’s casual attire. “Someone needs to tell you how to dress for business, boy.” He crossed his arms, causing the buttons of his white shirt to strain across his expansive belly.

  “Bob!” Kezia’s rebuke had a wobble of amusement in it.

  Christian kept a straight face only by not looking at Kezia. He could tell Bob what the jeans had cost him and be called a bloody fool. He could mention that Sartorial magazine had voted him Australasia’s best-dressed man for the past five years and be called a bloody pansy. Or he could enjoy the moment. He chose the last course, figuring his pleasures would be few and far between in the coming days.

  Emboldened by Christian’s silence, Bob grunted and picked up the contract. “Let’s get over to the pub before bloody Kelly remembers to swipe the change out of my pockets. Once a thief, always a thief, eh, Kelly?”

  Christian remembered a desperate boy who would rather steal money for food than admit to paternal neglect, and his jaw hardened. He’d amputated sentiment from his life when he’d left Waterview, yet all day he’d been plagued by phantom pains. “As I recall, I labored four weekends paying back that two dollars. But then, you always did know how to exploit a situation, didn’t you, Bob? Nothing’s changed there, either.”

  “I offered a fair price.” The old man blustered. “And Kezia was happy with it—” as she tried to interrupt Bob simply raised his voice “—until you showed up playing the hotshot with your fancy car and fancy attitude. Well, you’re home now, boy, and we know you for what you really are.”

  “Now, guys,” said George nervously. The man still ducked and dived his way through trouble, Christian noted, just as he had when they’d played rugby together in high school.

  Ignoring him, Christian gave Bob a contemptuous once-over. “And that is?”

  “The same loser your father was.”

  “Give me that contract!” Kezia stormed toward Bob with a look in her eye that made Christian wonder whether he should step in and save the old blowhard’s life.

  Bob obviously read the same message because he took a couple of steps back and held out the document. Christian neatly intercepted it. “You’re forgetting which cause you’re martyring yourself for,” he reminded her, amused and touched. It had been a long time since anyone considered him in need of a champion.

  “Damn it, Kelly, if you imply I’m a martyr once more I’ll—”

  “Let the bully have me?” He resisted her efforts to seize the contract by holding it aloft. “It’s okay, Kez, he didn’t hurt my feelings. I don’t have many so they’re a hard target.”

  “I don’t care, he crossed the line.” She was on tiptoe now, straining breast-to-chest with him, one arm upstretched, and Christian had a sudden urge to kiss her and put all that passion to better use. It scared the hell out of him.

  “Forget your principles for once,” he said more sharply than he intended to. “We need his money and we need it now.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw George wince.

  Kezia drew herself up to her full height. “Now, Christian!”

  “What the hell’s going on?” demanded Bob, mystified. “Why does she want the contract?”

  “To rip it up, you fool!” Anxiously, George gestured to Christian to hand it to him.

  Christian obliged, passing it over Kezia’s head. She spun around, her dark hair flying, but it was too late. George had wrenched open the door and sped down the road with it.

  “So,” said Bob after a moment’s stunned silence, “how about that drink?”

  KEZIA DIDN’T SPEAK TO CHRISTIAN for several hours, which suited him perfectly. He’d mainlined into her concerns when he’d only meant to dabble, and that annoyed him. What he needed was space, to reestablish his autonomy.

  So he shut himself in his room with his laptop and mobile and connected to the real world, taking dinner on a tray and ignoring the whispers of children outside his door.

  It was approaching twilight when he sought a change of scene and discovered the upstairs deck overlooking a quarter-acre yard with a large vegetable garden and a couple of flower beds. Beyond that was pasture, traversed by the highway heading to the city. The sight taunted Christian, but not enough to seek the bar and run the gauntlet of old acquaintances.

  Instead he found a pack of cards and took them outside where he sat at a wicker table and played Patience. He figured he needed the practice. He’d only played one game—and lost—when he heard Kezia at the open French doors behind him. “I won’t bite if you don’t,” he said, shuffling the deck and d
ealing two hands.

  “I haven’t come to play with you,” she began and he raised his head to enjoy the discomposure that always followed her unintentional double entendres. Since he knew from experience that she was a passionate lover, he could only assume it had been a while. Ungenerous of him to be glad.

  “I’ve come to apologize.” Kezia pulled up a chair.

  “Forget it.” He went back to playing Patience.

  As usual, she did the opposite. “It was enough that you had to listen to Bob’s insults without me getting mad and trying to scupper the deal we need so badly.”

  He shrugged. “If you apologize to me for stepping in, then I’ll have to apologize to you for not appreciating your defense. Like I said, forget it.”

  “You got a great price.”

  He heard the smile in her voice and looked up. Her silky hair was brushed to a schoolgirl’s neatness, wholesome and fresh. He smiled back. “Cleared you another ten thousand.”

  “Thank you,” she said formally.

  Christian’s smile broadened. She took her obligations so seriously, always had. Once, she’d taken him seriously. As a wild boy with wilder dreams he’d loved her for that. On impulse, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers; found them warm and firm and full like her curves. A burst of need jolted through him and he jerked back at the precise moment Kezia shoved him away. Hard.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

  “Nothing…it was a friendly gesture, that’s all.” Christian affected nonchalance. “Why are you making so much of it?”

  As he’d intended, she shrank back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I’m not. You took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  Attack was a great deflector; he stuck with it. “If that’s all…”

  “Of course that’s all.” Angry color rushed back into her face. “You think I’d still be carrying a torch for you after what you did?”

  “Oh, that’s rich.” Christian forgot his strategy. “After what I did?”

  Kezia held up her hands in supplication. “Truce. We’re not talking about the past, remember? We grew up, we got over it.” She shrugged. “At least, I did.”

  “Of course I did,” he snapped, then realized she’d turned the tables on him.

  “I’ll play cards now,” Kezia said serenely.

  He pushed the cards aside, suddenly restless. “How the hell do you stand all this peace and quiet?” Faint and far away in the country silence came the thin hum of a car, the sound growing louder as it approached down the lonely highway. Finally it streaked past, windows lit, a female passenger poring over a map. “Don’t you ever feel life is happening somewhere else?” he said, longing to be in that car.

  “Listen.”

  Crickets’ song swelled and filled the dusk. Above, the darkening sky seethed with stars. Swallows darted across its canopy, and Christian could hear the soft snort of cattle in the adjacent field, a strangely comforting sound.

  He’d forgotten that he’d never had a quarrel with the land. Slowly the tension went out of him. “Maybe,” he conceded finally, “some peace and quiet will do me good.”

  Christian’s magnanimity lasted until he got into bed and the springs screeched. Damn! How could they have gotten so rusty? He lay on his back, naked, feeling the sag in the mattress suck on his spine like quicksand.

  Cursing, he rolled onto his side—a squeal from the springs—and the knobbled embroidery on the pillowcase dug into his cheek. After five minutes of maneuvering around fleurs-de-lis he sat up and ripped off the pillowcase to a cacophony of protesting metal and flung himself down again. “Shit!”

  “Sorry about the bed,” called Kezia, her muffled voice sounding close.

  Christian snapped on the bedside lamp, saw the adjoining door barricaded behind a mahogany dresser and grinned. He switched off the lamp and lay back with his hands cupped behind his head. “How sorry?” he drawled suggestively, just for the hell of it.

  “Not that sorry.”

  He could tell by her tone she was frowning, no doubt lying demurely clothed and neatly tucked into that lush double bed, only her dark hair spilling untidily across the pillowcase. He remembered winding it around his fingers as he worshipped her ardent young body. His grin faded.

  He’d never given himself as recklessly to any woman since. The bedsprings gave voice to Christian’s growing disquiet as he tossed and turned on rationalizations.

  Okay, he still found Kezia attractive, so what? It was only because he’d been celibate for three months, taking a break from the game.

  And despite the occasional flashes of her wicked humor, Kezia wasn’t the playmate type, having fossilized into an earnest, thirty-two-going-on-fifty-two pillar of the community.

  Fourteen years later, Kelly, and you’re still looking for the last word. Forget your male ego.

  He turned carefully and was rewarded with only a small squeak of the bedsprings, which brought to mind the rat. In the dark he shook his head. Only Kezia would come up with such a novel solution for a bed-wetting Batman. His brain ran idly over the day’s conversations, braked and rewound. “The springs got worse because…only recently.”

  Christian jerked bolt upright. “Who was the last person to sleep in this bed?” There was silence, followed by a smothered laugh.

  Right, he thought grimly, all bets are off.

  AT SIX-THIRTY WHEN KEZIA went to creep past Christian’s door, running shoes clutched in her hand, she found it open.

  The sleeping man lay sprawled on his belly, one arm flung over the side of the bed, his face half buried in the pillow. Bare, broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, both deeply tanned against the white sheets, unlike the taut creamy buttocks the top sheet barely covered.

  But what made Kezia gasp was the sight of two small boys standing patiently by the bed. One wore a Batman cape and was sucking his thumb. “Come away,” she whispered, gesturing frantically.

  Batman removed his thumb. “We want him to wake up.” Christian stirred, opened one bleary eye and John Jason obviously thought him ripe for conversation. “You’re in my bed.”

  “I gathered.” Christian closed his eye again, opened it. “Where’s the rat?”

  “In my new room. I liked this one better.”

  Christian rolled over with a groan repeated by the bedsprings. “What time is it?”

  Time to flee. Kezia tiptoed away.

  “What’s the o’clock, Auntie Kezia?” Batman bellowed.

  Squaring her shoulders, Kezia turned around. “Six-thirty, now shush or you’ll wake your mother!” Christian, she saw, had propped himself up on one elbow and was looking at her with a predatory gleam. “Good morning,” she said briskly, refusing to feel bad. Really, she’d had no idea the bedsprings were that rusty. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Don’t get funny with me,” Christian warned her, looking downright dangerous with his disheveled hair and blue-black stubble. An effect negated by his two pajama-clad sidekicks. Kezia found it impossible to hide her smile. “You’ll keep.” He made it sound like a promise.

  “Can you please take us for a ride in your Ferrari?” John Jason’s sleepover buddy finally found his courage.

  “David is my friend,” Batman informed Christian in the manner of one providing a personal reference.

  Christian’s lips twitched. “Later I’ll take you. Scram for now.”

  Reluctantly they trooped toward the door where Batman paused. “Why don’t you wear pajamas? We all saw your—”

  “Boys!” Her cheeks hot, Kezia shepherded them out. “It’s too early. Go get breakfast.”

  When she turned back, Christian was leaning against the pillows with his hands clasped behind his head and giving her a killer smile. She asked primly, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “What I’d like—” his gaze ran lazily over her bare legs and high-cut running shorts and Kezia got hotter, resisting the urge to yank down her T-shirt “—is a new bed and a lock on my d
oor to keep out Peeping Thomasinas.”

  “I didn’t…it wasn’t…” she stuttered, then met his eyes. “Okay, you embarrassed me back, we’re quits.”

  “Who said I was embarrassed? Let me get dressed and I’ll come running with you.” When she hesitated, searching for a polite way to tell him she always ran alone, he raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you hanging around for another glimpse of my ass?”

  “Downstairs,” she snapped, “five minutes.” And fled.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HANDS RESTING LOOSELY on his knees, Joe Bryant sat in the clinic’s Spartan foyer, feigning nonchalance and hoping Rueben would get off the damn pay phone before his courage failed. Again. He cleared his dry throat. “Other people need to make calls.”

  The wiry teenager, all Adam’s apple and attitude, waved a dismissive hand. “C’mon, man,” he wheedled into the receiver, “I’m dying in here.” He glanced over to where Joe and Big Tim sat, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “It’ll be easy to smuggle it in, security sucks.” His voice hit normal levels and kept rising. “Whaddaya mean, you don’t trust me? Screw you, then. You’re no friend of mine.” He slammed down the phone and stormed off.

  “Dumb ass.” Shaking his head, Tim hauled himself to his feet. “Well, wish me luck.”

  “Good luck.” To both of us. Joe watched as his roommate lumbered over to the pay phone, laboriously fed in the right number of coins and stabbed in the number. And his heart began thumping against his ribs. Your turn next. Your turn next. A cold sweat beaded his brow and he couldn’t keep his hands still. “Not too long now, hey?”

  Tim grunted in a noncommittal way. Giving up all pretence of indifference, Joe began pacing. It gave the adrenaline somewhere to go, stopped it pooling in the pit of his stomach. Mentally he began practicing what he was going to say.

  Hi, it’s me. I know you haven’t heard from me in months, but there’s a good reason for that.

  “Don’t do this to me, baby.” The anguish in Tim’s deep bass broke Joe’s concentration. Wanting to respect the other man’s privacy, skittish enough already without someone else’s emotional baggage, he moved farther away, but Tim’s voice followed him. “Give me another chance, Ellie, I’m begging you.”